In A Past Life
by Icebabe59
Summary: In a world where magical creatures such as fairies exist it is amazing that even Sherlock Holmes could be kept in the dark, or he could have been had it not been for one rambunctious fairy. Molly had always been curious about the human world and it turns out that her curiosity might be exactly what both their worlds need. But at what cost? Rated T because of some darker chapters.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to BBC's Sherlock or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes or anything like that.**

* * *

The biggest secret kept by fairies is their ability to shift their physical form in almost any way they wish. Even when humans did believe in fairies, they could only guess at the true extent of the magic harnessed by the winged people. Very few fairies however, choose to change their form because they generally feel uncomfortable in forms that are not their own. Molly however, was one of the few exceptions to this generalization.

The biggest drawback, to Molly's mind was the amount of magic required for such a transformation. An illusion like that of a fairy shape-shifting into a humanoid form could drain a fairy of their magic, which was extremely dangerous. If a fairy used up all of their magic then the best they could hope for was to simply become mortal; though that almost never happened. Spells tended to have the unfortunate tendency to run amuck if not properly controlled, which could spell disaster. There was one way around that though: a talisman. A talisman could store enough magic to power a spell for longer than a fairy might otherwise be able to on their own.

The talisman that a fairy chose would stay with them throughout their lives and help them with many difficult spells. Because of this, there was a large celebration every year when it came time for the newest brood of fairies to choose their talisman. Molly had been so excited during the party that she had almost dropped the locket that she had chosen several times. Most fairies didn't pick something that was almost bigger than their head, but it was the one object she had kept from her past adventures in the forest that could blend into the human world. And besides with a simple enchantment the locket could be shrunk to fit Molly perfectly.

Molly enjoyed walking among the humans. To most of the fairy people, humans were simply dull and weak. This was of course the natural side effect of immortality and spell-casting, and the point of view that such power could give a person. However, there was one boy who came out into the fields often and every time she saw him, the boy grew more and more interesting. He seemed to be trying to absorb every minute detail of the world around him, unlike most mortals who simply saw and then moved on.

This intrigued Molly so much that by the time the boy had reached his late teens, she decided that she must talk to him. So one morning when he had found his way back to the field where she had first seen him as a little boy, Molly hid herself behind a human form - one of her favorites, a young girl with long brown hair, barely sixteen - and began wandering through the fields towards the boy. The day was so beautiful that it made Molly giddy. The sky was a seemingly impossible blue and the sun shone down on the small clearing made by a circle in the trees that were otherwise blotting out the surrounding skyline.

The boy was so busy cataloging the newest spring flowers and wondering what the best way to transport some of the petals, or perhaps a whole flower, was without them being crushed, to notice her as she headed towards him. She wondered if she ought to say something so she wouldn't startle him, but was saved the worry as the boy stood suddenly and turned toward her. They stood for a moment, staring at each other

"Who are you?" he asked, his angular features twisted into a quizzical, yet somehow demanding expression that caused Molly to giggle.

Sorry," she apologized, still giggling. "My name is Molly."

"Sherlock." He introduced himself and that was the last shred of attention he gave Molly as he turned back to the patterns in the dirt beneath his feet.

With an unpleasant lull in whatever conversation there had been and no idea what to do, Molly found herself staring at the boy. She had been led to believe through the stories of her people that most humans were more than willing to talk to a fairy – though they never knew the true identity of those they were talking to. It was believed that the magic fairies used to keep a human-like form also enchanted the humans, but with this boy this hardly seemed true.

It took nearly two minutes for Molly to recognize Sherlock's growing agitation. She had simply been watching as he saw the world around him, and had not really thought about the passage of time until the boy sighed dramatically and turned to her. "Why are you still here?"

"What are you doing?" Molly countered with her own question and walked towards Sherlock, bending down to see what he was looking at.

Sherlock didn't answer and was about to pick up the bell-shaped purple flowers in front of him – intending to take them home – but a loud shout from Molly made him stop. "What is it?" he asked irritably, turning towards her.

"Those flowers are poisonous. If you want to pick some wildflowers, then you want the white bunch over there, or almost any flower but those." Molly motioned to a clump of daisies and then around the entire clearing.

Sherlock stood looking over Molly for a long moment. He seemed to be thinking rather hard about something but seemed to give it up before questioning her. "How do you know that?"

"I. . . I just do," Molly stammered. In truth, she had known this since she was just a little girl. All fairy people had to know which flowers were safe and which were not, and Molly had wrongly assumed that all humans knew the same.

"Tell me more," Sherlock demanded.

Just as he did, Molly could feel the magic surrounding her waver. The locket –her talisman- was draining faster than she had anticipated. "What?" She had been too caught up in her thoughts to hear Sherlock. "I'm sorry. I have to go – I will be back here tomorrow." She added the last comment in a rush. She wanted to see this boy again, to talk to him again, and hoped he felt the same way.

Molly just made it to the trees before she had to break the spell. The locket had used its entire store of magic and she could not hold the illusion any longer. Back in her true form, she found that her wings were a little stiff from disuse, but she flexed them a little and heard the reassuring whishing sound that let her know everything was in working order. It took her a moment to locate her locket between two trees where it had fallen as she shifted back to her true form. Then, once she pulled it out of the dirt, she quickly shrunk it so that she could carry it up to a space between branches in the closest tree.

She sat on a branch not more than four feet off the ground watched interested, as Sherlock picked a bunch of flowers, carefully avoiding the ones she had told him were poison, and then walked off in the direction she assumed his home was in. She continued to sit for a while. She enjoyed taking in the day around her and nature's energy as she thought about the human boy she had gotten to talk to today, and she had no desire to go back to the village just yet.

OoOoOoOo

Sherlock had been about to repeat his request –demand- for information, but the girl was already gone, running to the closest clump of trees. He could not make sense of why the girl – Molly, he kept reminding himself – had run off so quickly. That alone made up his mind for him: he would be back in the clearing the next morning. Until then, he decided he was ready to be inside, perhaps reading. He followed Molly's instructions on the flowers and picked a safe-looking bouquet for his aunt.

As he thought over his previous conversation with Molly he thought about how he had taken to studying plants out here because there was little else for him to do. However, in all of his time out here he had not thought to learn if any of the flowers were dangerous. Who was this girl and how did she know about the flowers? If he had no thought to learn about them then he was sure that very few other people would have. Those questions weighed heavily on Sherlock's mind as he walked back to his aunt's cabin.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to BBC's Sherlock or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes or anything like that.**

* * *

Sherlock spent most of his time while he was not a school visiting his Aunt Rebecca Holmes. His mother had always found him to be a difficult child while he was young and so by the time he was eight, he was spending every holiday at his aunt's house in the forest. Normally, he would spend all day out in the forest exploring and learning everything he could. He knew he would surprise Rebecca by being home before lunch time, but he hoped it would be a pleasant surprise. He could read that it was in the crinkles of skin that formed in the corners of her eyes as she smiled when he presented her with the flowers and a light kiss to her cheek.

"You are home earlier than I expected. Will you want lunch?" she asked as she busied herself with finding a vase and filling it with water.

"Yes, thank you." Sherlock had always respected his aunt, loved her even. Since he was young she had filled the role of mother when his own was distant. She had always been pleasant and seemed to enjoy living secluded in the country – though the rest of the Holmes family seemed to enjoy speculating aloud as to why she was still single.

The two felt little need to talk after that. Sherlock knew his aunt enjoyed silence when she was cooking, with the exception of classical music – Bach today – set for background music. This gave him the perfect situation for studying for his next classes and just thinking in general. He brought his current book – something on geology – to the kitchen table and they kept each other company while she cooked.

Ordinarily, Sherlock would have no trouble learning his coursework for the next term, but today he found his mind wandering. There had never been anyone in the forest before, at least no one near his age. This girl had appeared from nowhere and Sherlock struggled to make sense of it.

Over an hour later Rebecca was instructing Sherlock to put away his book and setting a plate of food in front of him – food that for the next five minutes simply got pushed around his plate by his fork.

"Alright, Sherlock," his aunt cut through his thoughts. "Out with it. I mean, I know I'm not the best cook in the world, but I'm decent. So what is bothering you?" She was joking of course. Sherlock's aunt was the best cook he had ever met, so he briefly smiled before exhaling loudly and frowning.

"I met someone today, out in that clearing just past the old fence," Sherlock informed her.

"Oh?" Rebecca was truly curious now. Very few people wandered around out there because there was simply no reason to.

"Yes, a girl, about my age," he continued. "She just appeared."

Rebecca thought for a moment before replying, she also took the time to help herself to a mouthful of food, much to Sherlock's irritation. "Well," he replied finally, "that certainly is odd, but the McClain family down the road has a daughter who I suppose is just a few years younger than you. Do you remember? You met her when you were twelve, really big on physics that year if I remember correctly."

Sherlock did remember the girl. She had pushed over his newest experiment at the time and dumped the marbles he had been using all over the floor. He grimaced and the memory, causing his aunt to laugh. "No, it wasn't her. I would remember the girl who had ruined a perfectly good experiment. The girl I met today said her name was Molly."

He watched his aunt puzzle over this bit of information then hum noncommittally. "I don't know Sherlock; things have been changing so fast around here recently that I suppose there simply must be a new family that I don't know about."

Sherlock wasn't really pleased with that answer, but figured it was the best he would get from his aunt. He knew when his aunt had an explanation that suited her, that was the last she worried about it, but his mind could not let him be.

OoOoOoOo

After Molly had grown tired of sitting in the tree, she decided she had no other choice than to head back home. There was plenty of work on spring days like this for a fairy, especially for a healing fairy like Molly.

All fairies know the basics of the world around them, but there is so much in the world that, at the same time that a brood of fairies choose their talismans, they also choose aspecialtyfor their magic**.** Molly had always favored working with those fairies who had gotten ill and the animals that were sometimes brought into her care.

Spring was an unbelievably busy season for healing fairies – perhaps only exceeded by the flower fairies – because of all the young animals that arrived in the world as the season progressed. To add to the chaos that accompanied the new little ones, this season there seemed to be some sort of flu making the rounds through the fairy population. So when Molly arrived at the healing rooms located underneath the roots of one of the larger trees of the forest, she was not at all surprised to find it packed with all sorts of fairies and small animals.

"Oh, there you are Molly. I was beginning to wonder where you had gone to. Bed three needs a consultation and bed five is ready for discharge." Michael, the head healer and teacher for the youngest recruits, greeted Molly the second she flew into the rooms.

"On it!" Molly replied as she worked her way through the crowd towards bed three on the left wall of the rectangular, tree-root-lined room. As she tucked her wings behind her back before she started working Molly could feel the odd looks from around the room. It had gotten better as she grew up and people found better things to worry about, but every once in a while there was still someone. Molly shook off the stares though, and the feelings that accompanied them, before walking to bed three.

A young male fairy sat on the bed that Molly had been assigned to. His face was black and blue, and his nose looked broken. When Molly pulled back the spider silk curtain separating his bed from the others though he smiled widely despite his wounds. "It looks like my luck just got a whole lot better for me to get the prettiest healer here."

"I must not be the prettiest nurse here. If you were really lucky then you wouldn't have gotten into a fist fight." Molly knew that the boy's words were nothing more than harmless flirting; he wasn'teven old enough to specialize yet.

"Well, you're wrong, they must have punched the lucky right into me. My name is Wiggins, but everyone calls me Wigs." He offered and hand to Molly and she took it for a brief moment before pulling a length of gauzeoff the shelves.

"So what did a youngling like you do to get into so much trouble?" she asked as she started cleaning the cuts on Wigs' face.

The young fairy sobered immediately and looked at the woven pine needle mat covering the floor. "A couple of the boys two years above me were making fun of my wings," he whispered as he unfolded his wings from their resting position. Wigs' wings were a light blue that mirrored the clear sky outside with the exception of different sized black speckles that dotted both the upper and lower wing tips.

Molly sighed with understanding. "Well, I think your wings are amazing," she said with the biggest smile she could manage. While blue wings were common in butterflies, they were abnormal in fairies, and more often than not young fairies with blue wings were tormented by their peers. No one knew why this had started, or even when, but Molly knew all too well what Wiggins was going through. Her own wings were a dark blue in the center that radiated out to a pale white-blue at the tips.

"Thanks," Wigs said with little enthusiasm as he folded his wings back.

"You know, it gets better. Once you get older, people don't care as much usually." Molly said quietly as she finished cleaning Wigs' cuts and bruises with a little flourish before switching the subject. "It really won't take much magic to heal these, but if you would rather let them heal at their own pace then you might had a handsome scar."

Wigs seemed amused by the idea but shook his head before replying. "Nah, best keep my face nice and smooth don't you think?" Molly smiled and nodded wordlessly as she laid her hands softly on his cheeks.

She breathed deeply as she worked. Molly loved healing magic because it showed how all nature was connected. Healing Wigs broken nose was the most difficult part – resetting the cartilage and then repairing it – but the bruises were simple so it only took two minutes to complete the healing. When Molly finished the spell, Wigs looked much better and even joked with her as she had him sign the record of the healing. She was finished with him in almost ten minutes in all and had left him to go check on bed five, which Michael had told her needed release forms of some kind, when Molly heard the crumbling sound that was only caused by dirt sliding against dirt. It was a methodical sound with a tempo that sounded a lot like an animal walking. Then the main light source at the front of the room started to fade before all at once, the lights went out, leaving the room pitch black.

* * *

**Hi all! Just a quick author's note to apologize for taking so long to update. I was on holiday, but I'm back now so I should be updating with more regularity if I'm lucky. Thanks for reading!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to BBC's Sherlock or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes or anything like that.**

* * *

The wide healing room was in a state of panic and, to be honest, so was Molly. Fairies all around the room could be heard talking in hushed tones and the nervous fluttering of wings could be heard throughout the room. The healing room had been dug into the ground between tree roots, mainly for support of the walls but also because the northern entrance let in enough light that usuallythe room was full and bright; when it didn't, there were solar lights lining the walls. Many years before humans had even discovered electricity, fairies had learned to harness solar energy to create lights. Because of this, Molly knew full well that the lights that were currently dark should not have been, and that worried her.

It took nearly fifteen seconds for Molly to figure out that the lights would not be disrupting the current darkness any time soon so she pulled energyfrom the air around her to create a ball of light. This was a simple spell that was learnt by all fairies within their first two years, it was easy spell because it drew energy from the air around the spell caster rather than from their own magic reserves. Soon, more glowing lights began to appear around the room after Molly's and Molly looked around to assess the situation.

Fairies sat frozen at the patient beds, except for the occasional flutter of wings or sniffle from a particularly anxious one. Something in the air made it taste stale as Molly took a deep breath to calm her erratic heartbeat. Several of the braver fairies were investigating the walls and ceilings searching for what was causing the blackout. Molly was not included in these fairies –not because she didn't want to help find the cause of the sudden darkness that surrounded them, but because her main concern right now was the wellbeing of her patients; she had to make certain that none of them were in shock from the sudden changes around them, as many of the youngest and oldest fairies likely were.

It was true that, as far as Molly's could remember, the lights had never failed and made it so that many of the healing fairies on shift had to use magic to conjure light the room rather than healing those who were in need of help. But the full healing staff had seen enough strange things happen in the healing rooms, and they had been through enough training to calmly continue their work while others investigated. After a good five minutes spent sorting out and calming as many patients as much as she possibly could, Molly quite literally ran into Michael. "Oh! Sorry Michael." Molly jolted in surprise and had to refocus on her conjured light so that it didn't accidently extinguish. "Do we know why the lights went out?"

"Molly, um yes actually you won't believe this." Michael paused for a moment and allowed himself a small chuckle and a nervous smile. "It would seem that one of the older hedgehogs in the area became very tired and didn't realize that he had fallen asleep on top of the entrance. They're trying to nicely wake up the poor old boy now."

Molly both wanted to giggle herself about the circumstances and to scold Michael for laughing, but she settled for the first option when she thought about having to wake up a hedgehog without startling it. A startled hedgehog could be dangerous, though hardly vicious like some animals. "Well then, at least we know what caused that," she said between giggles. Michael agreed with Molly, giving her a large smile and a small nod before they both returned to work. The conversation left Molly wondering how a hedgehog could possibly disturbed the solar lights, but she had not had the time to ask.

After the hedgehog had been woken up - it was amazing how fast the darling had fallen asleep when Molly thought about it - and had wandered off to find a more amicable spot to take a nap in, the rest of Molly's shift was fairly quiet. There had been no extreme emergency cases that day, and that really surprised Molly. The worst case they had the entire time was a new smithing fairy who had fumbled a piece of iron he was working on and had a minld burn, which Molly healed in no time.

Despite the relative calm, by the end of her shift at the healing rooms Molly was completely exhausted. The day had used up much of her magic and the best way for her to restore what she had used was simply to go to her small room in the tree that she shared with several other fairies and to sleep for as long as possible.

That is exactly what Molly would have done too if her stomach hadn't chosen the exact moment she finished in the healing rooms to grumble loudly. Wishing food wasn't necessary, Molly decided to find some food before retreating to her room for the night. Since it was summer time, there were plenty of fresh berries to be found. Molly loved the wild strawberries she would find when she knew where to look, but she also enjoyed the raspberries and blackberries that seemed to grow in abundance during the warmer months. She enjoyed picking several berries for her and tucked them carefully in her bag that she usually carried with her; or at least as best she could.

Even in her exhausted state berry hunting was Molly's favorite pass time. Raspberries and black berries grew in abundance and the soil near the best fruits brushes was always rich and gave off a vaguely sweet smell past the usual mask. Strawberries on the other hand were harder to find. They always seemed to grow just past the point you expected them to be, by Molly had spent many years learning where to find them. That made today was an easy search.

The red fruits played peek-a-boo, almost hidden between two black berry bushes. Molly had no trouble picking the ripest among them though. Deciding that there was more than enough to share – and that she wanted someone to talk to – Molly decided to carry her feast over to her friend Mary's flower residence.

The berries were awkward to carry since they were so large. Two of the berries – the smaller raspberry and blackberry – fit into her messenger bag. The strawberry however did not. This meant that Molly had to carry the large fruit awkwardly under her arm.

Molly decided half way through her hunt for food that perhaps it would be a good idea to fly herself over to her friend's room and share her food. This turned out to be a good idea because Molly found her friend sitting just below the giant bellflower that served as her room for the season.

"Afternoon, Mary." Molly greeted her friend with a smile when she found Mary sitting in front of the bell flower apartment. "I brought some fresh berries, so I hope you're hungry."

Mary greeted Molly with a large smile and giggles. Molly assumed the giggle was caused by the fact that she looked very silly trying to carry the overly large fruit. "Need help with those berries Molly?" Mary stood as Molly landed on the ground nearby and helped Molly with her load.

The two women talked for a while as they ate and Mary even supplied a fair amount of honeysuckle tea to go with the fresh berries. Mary talked about her day at work as a nursing fairy for the youngest of the fairies to arrive in the forest. Apparently, one of the little girls that May helped watch over had really started to string her words together into sentences which, for this particular child, was a huge step given just a month before she had been too shy to talk to anyone in the day care.

It wasn't until Mary had finished talking about every single one of the younglings in her care that she stopped to ask how Molly was doing. Molly didn't mind this though because it had given her more than enough time to consider how much of today's events she really wanted to share with her friend. It was not against any sort of rule against interacting with humans, but it had become less and less common over the last few centuries to the point where such encounters were almost myths in and of themselves. In the end, Molly opted not to tell Mary about her encounter with Sherlock from that morning however, but did tell her friend all about Wiggins, the cheeky young fairy with a black eye and broken nose. Eventually, the sun went down and Molly grudgingly found her way home and to bed, exhausted. Once her head was resting on the loose feather pillow it did not take Molly long at all to fall asleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to BBC's Sherlock or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes or anything like that.**

* * *

Sherlock Holmes never was much of a sleeper, and the night after he met Molly was no different. After only two hours, like the flick of a switch, he was awake again. His small bedroom was warm, mirroring the night outside that was sliding in through the open window.

Without the ability to relax Sherlock found himself stepping across the room to his writing desk, flipping on the small lamp that sat on top of it and digging through the drawers for his notebook and a reliable pen. He immediately flipped to the first empty page, feeling the strait edges slide across is fingertips, and began scribbling furiously.

Whenever he could not sleep at night, it was always caused by an overactive mind. For Sherlock, this often meant having multiple topics running uncontrolled through his mind though tonight, there was only one: the girl from the clearing, Molly.

The pen scratched at the paper with a sound that would have been unnoticeable had the room not been otherwise silent as Sherlock worked. Moving furiously from one page to the next he would occasionally sigh, rip out the page he was working on in such a way that the very air around him seemed disturbed, and crinkle it into a ball only to toss it over his shoulder where it would land somewhere near the waste basket with a soft thump. Twenty minutes of scribbling and a lot of mental energy later, Sherlock had every detail he could remember about her down in his notebook, as well as a rough sketch. He was surprised that it took him that long to write everything to be honest – it had only been a short meeting – but seeing everything down on paper, physically there, was helpful.

But it was not enough and Sherlock found himself reaching for his phone. In the dimly room it took him a few moments to locate the electronic device, and once he did the light emitted from it nearly blinded him.

Closing his eyes for a moment and then blinking against the light, Sherlock impatiently waited for the adjustment of his pupils. A couple of taps on the touch screen and a long moment of irritation at how long this seemed to be taking later, the line connected.

John Watson looked rumpled and sleepy through the grainy video chat, and while the picture was too grainy to gather a lot of detail, the sandy blond teen was obviously annoyed. "Sherlock, it is nearly one in the bloody morning**.** You had better have a good reason for waking me up."

Sherlock had to smile at his friend, he simply couldn't help it. They had met in primary school and known each other for nearly six years. Sherlock had been forced into going to a rugby match for their school by a teacher who promised more time in the lab in exchange for 'getting out a bit'. So he went to the game, but before the first half was done he had drawn the attention of a few of the substitute players standing on the sidelines. Long story short, Sherlock ended up with a black eye and John as a new friend.

"When is it not of the upmost importance?" His grin widened as he spoke.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe the time you woke me up only to ask me if I had finished number nine on one of the maths worksheet last year – and not for the answer or anything else for that matter, just to see whether I had finished the question. Also, there was that time when you decided that calling me several times in five minutes just to see if I would continue to pick up. Seriously Sherlock." John's rant was practiced and went unanswered as Sherlock watched the current enigma presented by his friend. Angry though he was, John was still blinking against the light of his phone sleepily which somewhat diminished the otherwise intimidating sight.

"Well, it is important John. I met someone." Sherlock interrupted his friend's ramblings with a move designed to push the conversation quickly towards a more interesting topic.

John's shock was evident down the line as his jaw went slack and he seemed to drop his mobile because suddenly the screen on Sherlock's end showed nothing but a black background, he could also here his friend mumbling a few choice words before the screen once again showed John's face. This was enough to startle a small laugh from the dark-haired teen. "What exactly do you mean, 'met someone'?" John sounded cautious as he asked the question, like perhaps he was assuming that he had misheard his friend. Sherlock had overheard his friend more than once confess that Sherlock was a difficult person to read.

"A girl, John, wake up. I need someone to talk it over with." The exasperated reply was expected by both parties and Sherlock was pleased when it had its intentional effect; John held his tongue even though Sherlock was certain that speculation was running rampant in his friend's mind.

"Okay, talk."

"She appeared out of nowhere, and she's only sixteen. When was the last time you have known a sixteen-year-old to sneak up on me? No, don't answer that." Sherlock had to stop John when the blond boy was about to interrupt. "But even though she was young she was smart. No one is that smart at sixteen, no one cares about the flowers. Who notices if flowers are poisonous or not? Again, don't answer that. The real question however is why she was even out in the woods, though. Very few people spend much time outdoors, and so many parents are over-protective these days – even out here. I don't believe that an arguably quiet pretty young woman like that would be allowed out of the house alone at her age, but then again there are always anomalies. John, are you listening to me?"

John was so obviously asleep that Sherlock's question didn't even wake him. It took two minutes and Sherlock practically yelling into his phone to rouse the tired rugby player. "Sorry Sherlock," he slurred rubbing the heels of his hands over his eyes in an attempt to wake up enough to be coherent. "Did you say she was pretty?"

The confusion in John's voice was so evident that it caused Sherlock to roll his eyes with an almost painful amount of exaggeration. "Do keep up, John."

"I might be more able to keep up, Sherlock, if this were a decent hour for conversation. Why don't you hang up, let me sleep – because I know you won't sleep any – and call me back in five hours or longer, preferably longer." John then cut the connection and left Sherlock alone the relative dark with only his thoughts and sketches for company.

OoOoOo

The night lasted far too long in Sherlock's opinion. He passed the time organizing his thoughts into their proper place in his mind palace, and by finding rest somewhere in the realm between those of dreams and reality.

While he let his mind wander in such a way that he was allowed some increment of rest, many of the children's tales from when he was very little crossed his mind. Images of sitting on the floor near his grandmother as she told him one fanciful story after another dawdled over his consciousness: mermaids, elves, selkies and fairies all played common roles. Brownies, gnomes and Bogarts could always be depended upon to stir up some mischief that needed fixed as well.

Despite finding the stories illogical, they were all happy memories for Sherlock. His grandmother had grown up in a time of superstition and had enjoyed collecting the stories that so many long ago had considered true. As she grew older and became unable to do many things for herself, she became very adept in the art of storytelling, because of which she never lacked a captive audience – Sherlock included.

By the time the sun had risen above the horizon there was not a memory about her in his mind that Sherlock had not called up and examined out of boredom and loneliness. She had entertained him whenever he saw her and recalling these memories seemed to continue that feeling. He had been young when his grandmother died – only eight, but to many of the more relaxed family members she still lived on in the stories that continued to be passed from generation to generation.

Wiping away the last cobwebs of the fading and distant memories, stored in the very center of his forming mind palace, Sherlock climbed out of his bed and moving slowly, dressed and cleaned himself up for the day before making his way to the kitchen to find Rebecca sitting at the dining table with a mug of coffee and a sleepy smile playing across her lips.

"Good morning," she said, her voice still thick with sleep. As she greeted him, Sherlock could see in her hay-stack hair and slow movements that she had slept long and well, while her fuzzy slippers and housecoat told him that she would be working at home in her office today.

"Morning," Sherlock responded absentmindedly as he checked the time on his phone – still too early to call John back.

"Did you sleep well?"

"Yes, thank you." Sherlock helped himself to a cup of the coffee and sat across from his aunt. Since neither of them were exactly what might be called morning people. Food was not talked about, only plans for the day and whether or not to make another pot of coffee were topics included in this morning's brief discussions.

Rebecca eventually retreated to her home office where she began her work day as a medical transcriptionist and left Sherlock to his own devices. He, unable to stand the boredom of being alone in the house for long, decided that the moment he heard the office door click was also precisely the right time to phone John.

The phone rang three times before the video connected. John looked marginally more awake now that he had earlier so Sherlock didn't wait to say a proper hello before starting the conversation – not that he ever really did. "I am going to see her again."

"Good morning to you too, Sherlock. Yes, I slept wonderfully thanks for asking. How did you sleep?" Sarcasm seemed to be John's best mental defense.

"I don't sleep, John," Sherlock quipped rolling his eyes at his friend, "and for future reference, skip the snide comments, they don't suit you."

"Yes, well being a Mr.-Know-it-all doesn't suit you." John rebutted, "Wait, you are actually going to see your mystery Molly again?"

Sherlock sighed and rolled his eyes in response. "Yes, I think it will prove interesting."

"Yeah," John laughed seeing immediately through his friends attempt to cover the truth. "You just can't leave a puzzle alone."

Sherlock didn't respond to that. How could he? It was true after all, so he tried to move past the subject instead. "You aren't going to tell me not to?"

"There would be no use." John didn't even hesitate with his reply, "You would still do it anyway."

There was a subject they both easily agreed on and so Sherlock sat for a long while, still talking with John as the sun began its gradual ascent up into the sky.

* * *

**Sorry guys! I am trying to keep working, but I have gotten so busy recently that it is going to take me longer and longer to update until I can catch a break. Anyway enjoy, and if you really like it I would love a review telling me what worked and maybe didn't work. :)**


End file.
